


Away

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Timelines [24]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Infant Death, Mentioned Infidelity, Stillbirth, This is just all around really fucking sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 14:45:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13297092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: It seems like every time Ren gets pregnant, they're all products of her infidelity. The one time that it happens to be Leo's child, the one time she finally gets what she wants, things don't work out so well._____All pieces of the Timelines series are standalones and can be read without context.





	Away

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags. Infant death is there main theme and you may not want to read this if you've had a late term miscarriage or a still born.

Ren has given birth five times previous to this, and for the first time she wishes she wasn't alone.

She prefers to do it alone. No fussing of others, no one to fawn over her and ask about her comfort every five minutes. Of course she's uncomfortable, she's squeezing something the size of a melon out of a hole the size of a citrus. Uncomfortable doesn't even fucking cover it.

Leo was there when she was giving birth to her third child, her first son. It's probably good that he found her, because she was bleeding out and the baby wasn't coming. He sent for the Midwife, and sat by her while she kneeled on the hard stone floors of their chambers, steadily dripping blood out from around a crowning head. Her son finally came with the aid of the Midwife, and he had blond hair and none of Leo's features. Leo left to take a walk, and by the time he returned, Ren had already given the boy a new mother. He never mentioned it to her, not once.

Ren has also had miscarriages, ones that he doesn't know about. Well over a dozen. It wasn't until she overheard a conversation about what a miscarriage looked like for her to realize that the odd menstruation she was having wasn't menstruation at all. It was a miscarriage, and her third one at that.

It kills her that she can't have a family with Leo. She hates the thought of being a mother, but she loves him so dearly and knows she'd love any child he put in her. But they don't seem to stick. She bleeds them out before she even knows they're there, and the five children she's birthed and given away were all products of her infidelity.

Now, all she can do is stare down at this one, her sixth child and second son. Tears blur her vision when she figures out that this one isn't from infidelity like she'd assumed. One look at his tiny face gave it all away. He looks just like Leo.

Ren keeps her healing magic a secret, but still, she tries to use it on the babe. She doesn't use it often, it drains her so much to do so and she's already so exhausted from giving birth. Touching sometime when she wants to use it, she can pinpoint what's "wrong" in them and target it, heal the injury or ailment. 

She finds nothing wrong with him though, when she touches him and searches. Faintly, she wonders if the exhaustion will kill her if she tries to revive him.

Hearing the sound of her own strangled sob startles her. He was moving just fine last night, even this morning before her water broke and the contractions started. He came a little soon, sure, but not soon enough to be a problem. But now he's still, with no heartbeat and no flutter of tiny lungs.

The tears come in earnest when she brings him to her face, touches her forehead to his. His skin is sticky with her blood and afterbirth, and he's already starting to grow cold. She cradles his small form against her chest and cries into his limp body for a very long time.

Eventually, she can't get anything else to come. She's long passed birthing the placenta, so she cuts the cord and carries him across the room. She can deal with the mess later.

The basin of water on the dresser isn't warm, and she wishes it was. It isn't though, and she doesn't have the energy to warm it over the fireplace across the room, so she bathes his body with the cold water and a soft rag. He's beautiful, every child of hers is, but he's got Leo's beauty too. Has Leo's black hair, soft mouth, his nose. She wonders if he would have gotten Leo's brown eyes too, and it makes her eyes prick with more tears. 

She just needs a little more time with the babe. Just a little. So she wraps him in a soft white blanket, one she made just for him. It's so much easier to swaddle a baby that doesn't move, but she doesn't want ease. 

In the middle of the giant bed, she holds him against her and the tears come back, hot and fast. Ren presses her face to his head and sobs, each breath pulling in the sweet smell that new babies always have. She's always given birth alone, but she wishes Leo was here. If for nothing else than to share her sorrow. To kiss the side of her head as she feels her son's body starting to become stiff. To hold her close and hide the way his own eyes have grown red.

Some cruel thought invades her mind, and tells her with a sickly sweet, soft tone that everything he's put in her has died, and the baby is no exception. She just miscarried him later instead of sooner. Doesn't she recall that every miscarriage she's had wasn't from infidelity, but from her husband? She's not meant to have his children.

She cries long and hard until the moon is high in the sky and everything in the courtyard has grown silent.

Sneaking out of the house and away from prying eyes is easy. Finding a shovel is easy. Spending two hours digging a hole in the rose garden after giving birth is a fucking breeze compared to the difficult task of laying her baby's body in the ground. She silently breaks down as she places dirt over his body, and has to walk away when she finally brings herself to cover his face. She finds flowers left over from the gardener as she stands on the side of their home, trying to keep her grief muffled. There's a few rose plants left, and she picks one up, thorns be damned.

 

 

As always, when Leo returns from his mercenary work and finds his wife no longer pregnant, he searches for the baby.

Not searching in a conventional method, but his eyes roam. There's no babe in the middle of his bed, no bassinet by the warmth of the fireplace like she'd discussed putting one when they were still trying to conceive, so he knows she didn't keep this one either. 

But for the next two weeks, he can find no evidence of a child. She's given every baby of hers to his servants, for fucks sake, her oldest child serves him breakfast most days. This one seems to have disappeared into thin air. A few confirm that she was pregnant one morning, and not pregnant the next. And she never left, so she couldn't have taken it elsewhere.

There's an unspoken agreement, though. He never speaks of the evidence of her infidelity, ranging from pregnancy to giving her children away. So he can't very well ask.

Like always, she brushes off his attempts for sex by telling him that she's menstruating and it hurts this time. She's always a little emotional when she gives away a child, but it seems worse this time. Every night since he's been back, he's woken to her shaking and stifling her crying into her pillow, as far away from him on the bed as she can get. She rarely leaves the room, but he finds the time to quickly search their chambers while she's out doing something. The only thing he finds is a small, soft, white blanket under the pillow she's been sleeping on, and with his inhuman sense of smell, her can catch the faintest hint of "new baby" still clinging to it.

Frankly, he doesn't know how to traverse this. He's a hardened killer with less emotion than a rock, and his wife is a wreck. So he just kisses her like normal, and tries to touch her more often. His skin against hers seems to soothe her, if only a little.

She and the gardener argue every morning. He can hear it most days, but it's loud through the open windows of their chambers. Her pitch increases, grows more manic as it goes on, and Leo decides it's finally time to intervene. The arguments are growing tiresome to listen to.

The gardener accuses her of ruining the rose garden, points out an oddly placed but nice enough rose bush. She argues back that as the lady of the fucking house, she's very much allowed to do as she pleases with the garden. Shovel in hand, the gardener tells her he's moving it. Leo tells him very sharply to stop, drawing his wife's attention in the process.

"If he digs up that rosebush, I'll fucking slaughter him," Ren says with venom, and Leo can't help but notice her eyes are red rimmed and teary. Her knife is in her hand, so she's not fucking around.

 

Very abruptly, Leo realizes what happened to her child and where it is.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always very appreciative of your comments and kudos, so don't be shy about leaving either of those!
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
